Fortune's Wheel

by Rhoda Edwards

  The mist was clearing, and they could see the fleeing figures of victors and pursued. Richard got his feet tangled up again, this time in one of Exeter’s banners. He had put his mailed toe through the carefully embroidered flames of his brother-in-law’s fiery cresset and, judging by the heaps of bodies nearby, the cresset had burnt itself out. The ground was a red mush into which feet sank, mud made not with rain but the blood of men.

  They had got just beyond the fork of the roads leading northwards when some of King Edward’s men who had been in the forefront of the pursuit came running back to meet them. Warwick had been killed, before he could get to the tethered horses, none of the other lords with him. They were sure of their news — dead as a stone, they said.

  They found Warwick as they had been told — stone dead. When the men-at-arms he had led to help his brother Montagu had been put to flight by the irresistible advance of King Edward, Warwick had made for where the horses were tethered. Before he got there, a group of the King’s archers, who could run faster than he could, had cut him down and killed him with the indifferent efficiency they might a sheep.

  They were trying to pull the rings off Warwick’s fingers and had collected the loot — his dagger with a jewelled hilt, his gilt spurs, his sword belt, also jewelled — and were beginning to unbuckle his armour of fine Italian work when a barked order from King Edward brought them to heel.

  Richard, his bruised, aching body moving now like a sleepwalker’s knelt down and turned the Earl on his back, intending to remove his helmet, then stopped. The archers had killed him by the quickest method: tripped him, clubbed him and laid him on his back like a beetle, then opened his vizor and used knives. Richard saw the result.

  King Edward, standing over his kneeling brother, saw also. He took Richard by the shoulders and all but lifted him bodily to his feet.

  ‘Leave it,’ he said, almost roughly. ‘There’s nothing to be done.’

  Richard was dumb. Perversely, he knelt down again and felt for the Earl’s hand. The men had not had time to remove Warwick’s signet ring. Richard slid the massive lump of gold off the sinewy, rather knobbly jointed third finger. There was still a trace of warmth left. Richard tried to mouth a prayer, but no words came. He made the sign of the cross instead. He stood up just as King Edward was about to haul him to his feet again. The ring lay in his hand, a big, heavy, man’s ring. On the roundel in front was a motto Warwick had used. Seulement Un. One only.

  King Edward looked at his brother. ‘There will never be another,’ he said. ‘May God have mercy upon him.’

  At this moment, Clarence joined them. ‘What…?’ he began. Then, ‘I did not wish this on him. My wife’s father…’

  King Edward restrained himself from reply. Whatever Clarence had wished for, he had tried to obtain, and hang the consequences. He seemed unable to relate cause and effect.

  The King said instead, ‘George, you’ve done well today. You have good men in the west country. There would have been no battle today without you.’ This might be interpreted in two ways, though the King smiled and laid a hand on his brother’s arm. Then he said, ‘Richard, without you, I’d have been lost.’

  That was the greatest tribute of all. Yet Richard was too battered in mind and body to sense the victory, or to feel elation. He was thankful that God had preserved his life, but that was as far as he could think. Someone had killed Warwick by sticking a knife through his eye into his head, and God had watched.

  There were other inert figures in red jackets with ragged staves on them, lying around. Some of the Earl’s men had been trying to escape with him. One of them was still alive — just. His limbs twitched a little, like something a hawk had caught and dropped on the ground preparatory to eating.

  Richard, when he should have been at the King’s disposal and ready to begin clearing up operations after the battle, for some reason turned his back on his brothers and went over to take a look. He turned the wounded man enough to see his face. It was a very young man, little older than himself. The eyes were open. The face had very little blood on it and was immediately recognizable. Richard, fresh from his brother’s magnificent accolade, was overtaken by a monstrous pain, as if he shared the other’s suffering. Recognition between them was instant. Of all the corpses and near corpses Richard might have stumbled on — even Warwick — this one he could bear least of all.

  The face of his friend John Parr looked up at him in amazed disbelief, trying to speak, and to clear the agony. During the years Richard had been with Warwick, this boy had been his friend. He was the younger son of a poor branch of a north country family, most of which had taken the part of King Edward. John, lucky to be in Warwick’s household, had stayed there after his apprenticeship as one of the Earl’s squires. He had taught Richard all that he knew of the north country moorland ways, of talking to the people, of living off the land, the names of birds and trees, all of which John had been born to, and Richard had not. They had fought each other, and given each other more bruises than ever might be counted. John would not fight again. He was going to die, within a matter of minutes. Because there was nothing else to be done, and they were beyond speech, Richard held his hand. There were no priests near.

  After that the finding of Warwick’s brother John, Marquess Montagu, not far off and butchered in even uglier fashion, seemed inevitable. He must have tried to defend Warwick, in the instinct of brothers. Under his armour, John Neville was wearing two devices of gold, one a ragged staff, as was natural, but the other the sun-in-splendour, as if he had intended to proclaim to those who might find him that his heart had been torn equally into two. He had not wished to live.

  It was then, as if from a very long distance, Richard noticed that blood was dripping from the fingers of his left hand, spotting the ground. It took a few moments to realize that he still wore a gauntlet, and that the blood making its way through was coming out of himself. He took no notice.

  King Edward, however, who had sharp eyes, did notice. ‘You’re hurt, Dick,’ he said. ‘Get yourself to my surgeon — now!!’

  The boy John Parr was dead. Richard moved away, obedient to his brother’s orders.

  Easter Day. The bells of Barnet church proclaimed it, and went on ringing, not for the victory of Christ over the grave, but for the victory of the King over his enemies.

  That night Richard lay in his own bed in the palace of Westminster and could not sleep. The events and horrors of the past day repeated themselves in an endless pattern in his mind like the jangle of bells. He did not want to see or to hear, or to know, but he saw and heard, over and over.

  He had knelt in St Paul’s that evening with his brothers and given thanks to God for his life, their lives, and for the victory, which was as cold within him as the naked dead left on the field at Barnet. He had gone back to the palace, eaten a little, soaked his hammered flesh in hot water and felt no better. His left arm was more painful than he would admit. Someone had managed to make a cut in it as neatly as if they were using a carving knife; it had gaped like a split loaf. Only a flesh wound — not very deep but hellish long. The worst part had been having to look at what was going on in the surgeon’s tent. He had stood like a rock while shreds of padding from the jacket worn under armour were removed from his wound with tweezers, and been bandaged up until his arm would not fit into any sleeve. It was as if he were unable to shake himself free of the fog of the morning. He was so exhausted, he could not sleep. It was too much effort to toss and turn, so he lay still. Quite suddenly, without warning, tears burst out of him as if out of a smashed water crock. Some men were taken like that a while after they had endured the surgeon’s knife without a whimper. He turned on his face and stuffed the sheet against his mouth like a child and wept until there were no more tears left in him to weep.

  11

  Checkmate

  April – May 1471

  This world I see, is but a chery fayre,

  All thyngis passith and so moste I algate.

&nb
sp; This day I satt full royally in a chayre.

  Tyll sotyll deth knokkid at my gate

  And unavised he said to me, ‘Checkmate!’

  Loo, how sodynly he maketh a devorce

  And wormes to fede here he hath layde my corse.

  This World I see is but a Chery Fayre (15th cent.)

  11

  Easter Sunday was almost over. There were no bells to greet Queen Margaret at Weymouth. She had been so ill that she could not walk ashore unaided. Twenty-one days they had been held up at Honfleur; twenty-one precious days run out like sand from a shattered hour-glass. The gale which had blown the Queen’s ship into Weymouth Bay had driven some of the others God knew where. Anne did not know whether her mother was drowned, shipwrecked, or ashore in another harbour. No one at Weymouth had news of her father less than a week old. She had not believed that a worse situation than her family’s plight of the previous Easter could arise. This time her sister Isabel was the only one of them to be safe.

  While Queen Margaret uncharacteristically took to her bed, the Prince threw himself into his longed-for role of military commander. He sat down with Sir John Langstrother, Lord Wenlock and Dr Morton, to spend half the night dictating letters to all the lords who might be expected to raise men and rally to Lancaster. With luck, Warwick would be already on his way from Coventry, uncle Gaspard Tudor from Wales; Somerset and Devonshire had probably made an army of west countrymen a certainty. What chance would the meagre forces of the York brothers stand against all this?

  The next morning they left Weymouth and travelled north as far as the Abbey of Cerne. This was on the recommendation of Dr Morton, who had many friends there. Queen Margaret, still suffering the effects of mal de mer, was in bed again before daylight had gone. Anne had nothing to do but keep out of the way. She felt strangely ill at ease in the tranquillity of a west country spring evening. All was so quiet, except for the many domestic noises of a great Benedictine house. The Abbey buildings lay among the smooth green hills like sheep in a fold. Anne thought, staring at those hills, that they had a very strange shepherd. On the side of the down was an enormous shape, a giant’s figure outlined in white on the green, nearly as big as the hill itself. He was brandishing a club. He was displaying a great deal else, like the sort of drawing one found on the walls of guard rooms in castles, and was not supposed to see. He was a menacing giant. Anne stared at him in fascination and dislike. She felt unhappy and unsafe. The world beyond the Dorset hills was a dangerous place, full of the noises of anger, quarrelling and fighting — and killing. In this state of mind, even the sound of horses on the road alerted her to alarm. These horses were tired, flagging in pace, but still urged on by their riders. They came in sight on the downhill road, below the feet of the white giant, and broke into the half-hearted canter of the nearly exhausted at their journey’s end. Anne watched them draw rein in front of the abbey guest house. She was close enough to see the faces of the riders. Among them was no one she recognized. They brought bad news. Their faces were grim, not those of men sent to welcome home their Queen and Prince.

  The Prince himself ran out to greet them before they could even dismount. The leading horseman climbed stiffly down from the saddle and knelt to kiss the Prince’s hand. He was a big, dark, handsome man, not young, but not yet greying. He got up from his knees, and he and the Prince embraced like long-lost brothers. Anne, tensed and watchful, hesitated to go forward herself. The servants who had come wore badges some of a gold portcullis, and some a dolphin. This must be Edmund Beaufort, Duke of Somerset, who had been so long in exile from England that she had never seen him. He was one of the old Lancaster supporters who had never compromised, who had lost his father and his elder brother in the cause. With him were his younger brother, John, and the Earl of Devonshire. Somerset moved with the Prince towards the house door, his grim face unrelaxed.

  Anne followed them into the house. Beaufort and Devonshire, and one or two others, followed the Prince straight to his mother’s room. Queen Margaret was in bed. She lay propped up by pillows, her face hollow-cheeked and green tinged. With her head uncovered and her hair in two long braids she looked smaller than when up and about, shrunken almost.

  ‘My lord Duke! Edmund, John, my lord of Devonshire, you are an even more welcome sight than the shores of England! I am sorry to greet you in such a feeble state, but you know how the sea punishes me for embarking on it. At last — some news!’

  They all three knelt and kissed her hands fervently.

  ‘I wish,’ said Somerset, ‘I had news which would give you more cause to welcome me, madame. It grieves me to see you so unwell. If it were possible, I’d leave this until you had recovered, but it cannot wait.

  ‘Madame, Edward of March met Warwick in battle at Barnet heath, near St Albans, yesterday morning.’ He was looking down at the shrouded figure of the Queen, under the blankets and silk counterpane, avoiding her eyes. His voice was harsh with restraint of the emotion he felt at breaking this news to her, and the need to show that he estimated that it might have been worse.

  Anne stared at him, at the other still figures.

  ‘March had the victory,’ Beaufort said. ‘Warwick is dead. Montagu, Exeter, too. Oxford escaped.’

  Warwick is dead. Anne heard the words and recognized their meaning, but they had no immediate effect on her. She heard Queen Margaret cry out into the terrible silence.

  ‘Lord Jesus — why have you done this to me!?’ She turned on her side and beat her fists against the pillow. ‘Why, why, why… I’ve been lured back to this devil’s land only to be told this! He has failed. All words, words! He was a false traitor from the beginning. Why didn’t he wait for us?’

  ‘He was killed in the rout, Montagu trying to save him. Wait? Madame, he waited too long, that is why he is dead.’

  The Queen’s women were round her bed, trying to comfort her. Anne did not move.

  ‘Pack my baggage!’ Margaret shrieked. ‘We’ll go back to Weymouth tonight and be in France again by Wednesday. Anywhere is safer than this treacherous land!’

  ‘But Madame — please, not so hasty. Think, Warwick gave battle on his own account. He lost. But we are the main army, which he did not even call upon. If he had waited for us to come up from Devon, March would have been beaten. The battle was bloody — they have lost many men. But we are fresh. All the west country will join us, already they flock to my lord Devonshire. Pembroke will join us soon, from Wales. I believe we are stronger now. Those who would not fight for Warwick will lay down their lives for us — for you, the King, the Prince. Lucifer is better dead!’

  Better dead. My father’s dead, Anne thought.

  ‘Madame, maman! Edmund is right! Surely we can fight now on our own account, without a traitor in our midst, like Jonah. We have so many good, experienced, faithful men. We are so determined. God and the saints will fight for us. Men will follow me, maman!’

  ‘No! The risk is too great.’

  ‘Risk!’ The Prince’s voice rose in anger. ‘Always risk! Does Edward of March worry about risk? He only won this battle because he did not meet us. He risked far more than we shall. He has a brother near my age; he has to take his chance with the rest.’

  ‘March’s brother is of no account!’ his mother snarled. ‘You are heir to the crown. Your blood is precious.’

  ‘Heir! Yes, I am, and I want my inheritance, maman, I want my crown! I want to be Prince of Wales in more than name — not to be a pauper princeling for the rest of my life!’

  The Queen burst into hysterical weeping. ‘Out, all of you! Leave me, leave me…’

  They all surged out in confusion, except for the women grouped around the bed. Anne was left standing alone, like a stone exposed by the tide. She was not quite sure of where she was, or that anyone had left. She felt dizzy and cold. No one had noticed her, not even her husband. No one had thought to give her the news at first hand. Probably no one among Somerset’s party knew what she looked like. She did not know how long s
he stood there, intruding upon the Queen’s rage and misery. Lady Katherine Vaux and Petronille and Marie were trying to soothe Margaret, telling her that she had overcome many worse defeats than this — the death of a man who was, after all, her enemy.

  ‘He was a coward — I always knew it,’ Margaret railed. ‘Look what he’s left on my hands — a useless girl with no inheritance and tainted blood. Why did I ever, ever allow it — my son would have made a great marriage. Now all is spoilt, and I allowed it. Ah, Katherine, it is all my fault, my cowardice. If I had come to England sooner, we would have beaten March before ever he gained a foothold. Ah, le temps perdu! All my fault, and my son begins to hate me for it…’ She was distraught, breaking into fresh sobs, which would have been heartrending to hear if Anne’s heart were in any condition to be reached. It felt as if it had dropped out and disappeared under the floor. She stumbled out.

  A useless girl with no inheritance. She fled out of doors without any purpose in mind. It was growing dark. Useless, with tainted blood — she, a Neville! Now the Queen will persecute me, she thought. She will want to get rid of me — where will it end? I believe if they win, she will have me poisoned, to leave her son free.